• Mathematicians need to develop their oft-neglected social skills, a math professor at Cornell said.
• Though AI can do the legwork on complex problems, personal charisma is a human-only skill, Steven Strogatz said.
• "Rizz is more and more in demand," he added.

"Social skills" and "mathematics" are terms not often grouped together. In the age of AI, one math scholar says that needs to change.

With AI now capable of handling the geeky legwork required by complex problems, Steven Strogatz, a lecturer and Susan and Barton Winokur Distinguished Professor at Cornell University, said mathematicians should prioritize developing their personal charm in order to set themselves apart.

"I'm starting to think that what makes a future mathematician or a math professor is your unique brand," Strogatz said in an interview with Grant Sanderson, a math educator affiliated with Stanford University.

"Rizz is in more and more demand because it's something that only people have," he added.

Rizz, a Gen Z slang term, is defined by Merriam-Webster as "romantic appeal or charm." (Strogatz, who is 67, appeared to use the term solely to mean charm or charisma. He did not suggest mathematicians need to work on their romantic prowess.)

"What we're selecting for is an element of mathematical rizz," said Sanderson. "The PhDs to be are not going to be differentiated by pure problem-solving abilities."

The brusque push of AI companies into mathematics has caused consternation and head-scratching from many a math geek, as the field ponders ways to stay relevant while OpenAI floods the zone with hundreds of proposed solutions to the world's most complex problems.

Some professors have sworn off AI altogether. Most, however, are trying to find ways to incorporate the technology into their work.

In September, a group of undergraduates at Caltech announced a "mathathon" event in which participants were encouraged to use AI to solve problems in a single, no-sleep sprint. Only days after the undergrads announced the event, a coalition of over 700 academics signed an open letter calling for its cancellation, citing its promotion of AI "slop."

Though the event is set to continue, with some slight alterations, the clash underscored an internal conflict in the math community over how to adapt to AI — a development poised to impact many burgeoning careers in the field.

"We've had whole research programs wiped out on Tuesday," Tristan Buckmaster, a math professor at NYU, said after OpenAI published 700 new findings about outstanding problems earlier this month.

The issue is of supreme importance to Strogatz, who has made several media appearances in the last couple of months. In an essay published in The Atlantic on Sunday, he put the issue in stark terms.

"I am a math professor, and my field is in crisis. Nobody in math is ever going to forget the year 2026," he wrote. "Unless this is really the end of the subject, and then nobody will remember anything about math anyway."

• A version of this story originally appeared in the AI Insider newsletter.
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A few weekends ago, my wife left on a business trip with one instruction: fix the Wi-Fi before I get back.

Her Zoom calls kept dropping during important meetings, so I tracked an old Cat 6 ethernet cable from our data closet so I could hardwire her laptop to the interwebs. The only problem? It ended as a raw, cut end, and I had no idea how to terminate it with an ethernet plug.

So I did what I do these days whenever I'm out of my depth: I asked ChatGPT.

I sent it photos at every stage. It told me which tools to buy, showed me how to strip the cable, arrange the eight tiny wires in the right order, and even drew little diagrams when words weren't enough. When I got frustrated, it gave me a pep talk.

My first attempt only delivered about 100 Mbps instead of our 1 Gbps internet connection. ChatGPT guessed two wires were faulty, suggested an inexpensive cable tester, interpreted the flashing lights from a photo, and confirmed the diagnosis. I cut the connector off and started again with a simpler plug it recommended.

The result? Around 850 Mbps.

My only complaint: ChatGPT would occasionally disappear down a rabbit hole with advice that was far more complicated than I needed, so I'd remind it I wasn't rewiring Silicon Valley. I just wanted my wife's Zoom calls to stop dropping.

So far, her video calls have been perfect. Without ChatGPT, there's no chance I'd have pulled this off.

Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com

• Cybersecurity researchers say the PHP vulnerability has repercussions for normal people, too.
• Even if you don't own a website, hackers could use the vulnerability to steal your information.
• One quick fix: diversify your passwords.

If you're still using the same password for everything, it might finally be time to get on that.

While the major cybersecurity vulnerabilities that OpenAI agents helped expose on Wednesday primarily impact the owners and operators of websites, it could also give hackers the opportunity to hijack your personal information, researchers said.

"Be extra careful visiting ANY web site in the next few days," Changpeng Zhao, the cofounder of cryptocurrency platform Binance, said on X.

OpenAI said on Wednesday that researchers using its AI models uncovered two "critical" flaws in the infrastructure of PHP, a popular open-source programming language used on about 70% of the world's websites.

Because digital commerce websites, for instance, can store personal shopper information in PHP systems, that information would be accessible to a bad actor exploiting the web provider's system if that provider hasn't updated it.

The National Security Administration warned that hackers using one of the PHP exploits could "steal sensitive data, disrupt services, or move deeper into a network."

"Even if you yourself are not building software and that's not where your core business is, a lot of your life does depend on companies that depend on those systems," Madeline Lawrence, cofounder of Aikido Security, an application security platform, told Business Insider on Thursday.

"And they could be deeply, deeply vulnerable," she added. She said that one day after the disclosure, cybersecurity platform Cloudflare reported millions of attempts to exploit the vulnerability.

If you do own a website, PHP has released updates it says will help shield websites from hackers. Instructions for applying those updates are available on PHP's homepage.

For everyone else, here are a few tips cybersecurity researchers say you can use to protect your info.

• Don't reuse passwords; use a password manager.
• Check for security advisories from your bank.
• Use two-factor authentication on your devices and accounts — especially for email, banking, and your password manager.
• If your data has been breached, expect more convincing scams and phishing emails.
• Turn auto-updates on and restart your computer weekly.

"You can ask your claude code to audit what on your laptop is out of date and needs updating," Peter Wildeford, head of policy at the AI Policy Network, a bipartisan nonprofit that advocates for safety guardrails and federal oversight, added in a post on X.

Though Lawrence called the vulnerability "very severe," she cautioned against people running to close their bank accounts to protect themselves.

"Assume that if you're getting a notification that your data has been leaked," she said. "Take action on that because you could have credentials or information floating around the dark web."